


faded coat of blue

by actualflower



Series: character studies: mortality and bonds. [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Panic Attacks, i dont want anyone to be triggered, please make sure to heed the tags, please take care of urselves babs, set immediately post-Briarwoods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:44:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7029112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualflower/pseuds/actualflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>percival, post-Briarwoods. a snapshot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	faded coat of blue

**Author's Note:**

> please, please, PLEASE make sure to read the warnings. i rated this one mature because of those warnings.

percival fredrickstein von musel klossowski de rolo iii looks in the mirror and does not cringe. his hand goes to rub at his sleep-roughened face and the stubble there, and wishes for a razor only to clean it from his face. he doesn’t think about drawing it across his throat, and he doesn’t think about the mess it would be to leave his body for the rest of vox machina to find. instead, he pulls a little straight-razor from the washbasin in front of him, and begins the short process of cleaning the stubble from his face.

it’s over in moments - he’s not one for growing much on his face, never has been - and he dresses for the day, all of the trappings of his armor and his lost office, and purposefully does not feel the loss of his pepperbox on his belt. he adjusts his jacket, makes sure the long trail of it drapes gracefully to his knees. he inspects his image in the mirror, satisfied with the dark smudges under his eyes and the artful unkemptness of his shock-white hair.

pike greets him at the door of his room in the castle of whitestone (not his home, has not been his home for so long, but he will not think of that), and she smiles, angelic. her form is still stuck in its shimmering aether. it hurts him to look at her, but he isn’t quite feeling as much today, so he smiles back.

it is good enough. it will be good enough.

he shuffles through the day kindly, shuffles around lending his hand to the recently-freed townsfolk and avoiding anything to do with the castle proper. he looks at the sun tree in the center of town, can almost feel its renewed growth in the new sunshine. 

his hand moves to the raven’s beak at his throat, and he swallows.

he takes his leave early, gives congenial smiles a careful step removed from actual feeling, and flees to the cannibalized workshop in the castle before he collapses to the ground with something twisting in his throat that feels too much like smoke and anger and fear - 

he throws off his jacket, heedless of wrinkles and appearances and station in this moment because he can’t breathe, and drags numb fingertips against the buttons of his waistcoat before he gives up and curls around himself in the corner, dragging in painful lungful after lungful of dusty, too-hot air. he can still feel that demon’s talons digging white-hot into his heart, can feel the anger and hurt, and suddenly his sister’s face is all he can see and he’s back to gasping like a fish out of water and he can’t believe it, he won’t, even as the demon whispers and he looks at the gun in his hands and he sees her name, he sees her, he sees red - 

it’s a long time before he comes back to himself. he hears the knocks at the door, finally - they’d grown increasingly loud over the course of the past hour, but he can’t remember hearing them before just now. he looks at the state of himself, and lets his head loll back against the stone of the workshop wall. ‘give me a moment,’ he yells, and his voice is gruff.

he picks himself up out of a sense of duty. moves mechanically to the door, undoes the makeshift latch that’d been placed there when the door was broken, probably sometime after his escape - 

he banishes the thought from his mind. instead, he smooths his face into careful blankness, and finds it much easier to breathe with everything a step removed.

it’s keyleth at the door, her face twisted with worry. she looks at percy with a mixture of relief and fear, and he can’t help but feel a little worried himself, even through the cotton of his own self-erected distance. “is everything alright?” he thinks it’s funny that he’s the one asking this, as if he wasn’t just breaking down in the corpse of his childhood home.

“percy, you - it’s been almost three hours since anyone last saw you, and i thought i’d check up on you - “ she says, and it should be touching to him, he thinks, “ - are you alright? you’re just sitting alone, in this empty room, and i know you’ve been through a bit since we got here - “

he puts a hand on her shoulder and smiles, but the gesture is more generic than genuine. “keyleth, i’m fine. just thinking of ways to fix up this place. you know me, always losing track of time when i’m really invested.” the lie is easy, and all the more believable when it’s true (at least in part).

keyleth is still uneasy, but she nods, and smiles back with a hand overtop percy’s own on her shoulder. “-alright,” she says after a beat, “but it’s almost suppertime. make sure you eat something, okay?” 

he nods, and he’s almost not lying. she leaves with another look, a smile that’s equal parts concern and pleasantry. he shuts the door behind her.

he doesn’t leave the workshop that night.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not entirely pleased with this one, but i wanted it up anyway because i knew if i kept picking at it i'd never post it. i think next up is probably keyleth! bc i love her and she's wonderful and a very interesting, nuanced character!
> 
> i relate to percy a lot, and that probably shows in all this projection lmao ANYWAY more poetic bullshit from ur local pretentious asshole, me
> 
> title from Faded Coat of Blue by Jolie Holland.
> 
> talk 2 me abt gunslingers @ ppepperbox.tumblr.com!


End file.
